This post is sponsored by Everywhere Agency on behalf of Sistema®; however, all thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.
Are you ready for back to school? If you are a parent, you probably cheered, “Yes!” to that question. Summer is half over, and stores are already bringing out the school supplies, taunting students as they walk down the aisles. While you make those back to school lists, you should also be thinking about back to school meals. The start of another school year is when the chaos starts, and for many of us, it becomes increasingly harder to find the time or even inspiration to create nutritious school meals. Knowing that what we eat directly affects how our body and brain function, I’ve found the best solution is to have a meal prep plan in place to make sure my child eats healthy during the school year so they can be at their best.
CBS News reported on a Clinical Pediatrics Journal from 2014 that researched the correlation between fast food consumption and academic performance. It found that the children who ate the most fast food in a fifth grade classroom improved less in their test scores in math, science, and reading by the time they reached eighth grade. Studies such as this stress the importance of providing proper nutrition to children. Luckily with simple meal prepping, it’s easier to give your kids delicious, healthy meals while saving precious time and money. It is also the perfect reason to start your own healthy habits. Here are the five biggest reasons you should be meal prepping.
Gain Healthier Habits
Leading a healthier lifestyle seems to be a constant battle for most of us. We are forever trying fad diets, trendy workouts, and “new” foods to try and “get healthy”. The only problem is, that most of the healthy habits we try to incorporate into our lives require more time, effort, and attention than we are used to and it makes them difficult to maintain. Setting aside some time one or two days a week for meal planning helps create more time in your everyday life, while incorporating better foods instead of what is easiest.
If you don’t know where to even start, consider a little light reading like Smart Meal Prep for Beginners: Recipes and Weekly Plans for Healthy, Ready-to-Go Meals to get started on a path of better eating habits. It is a complete beginners guide to start truly incorporating better meals into daily life. Pinterest is also a great source of inspiration or easy to follow meal plan ideas or menus.
If you happen to be a busy mom caring for your kids and maybe even beginning to juggle the care of your aging parents, you will love Cooking and Meal Prep: Feeding Your Parents, Your Kids, and Everyone in Between. It has everything you need to know about meal prep for your family and creating better eating habits without spending hours in the kitchen or always relying on the cafeteria to feed your kids.
Save Time
Imagine a morning when you wake up, get ready and actually leave on time. No rushing around trying to make breakfast and pack lunches or those mornings you have to stop at the ATM to grab lunch money when there is no food left in sight. Creating a meal prep routine that allows you to make all your meals for the week at once will save you time and energy. No mad dashes to get everyone fed and out the door.
If you have never meal prepped, it can seem daunting, but it’s actually done in just a few easy steps.
- Step 1 – Choose your recipes for the week
- Step 2 – Get your ingredients
- Step 3 – Cook anything that needs to be cooked and pack your meals up for the week.
- Step 4 – Bam! You have a whole week’s worth of meals sitting in your fridge. Now, you can enjoy more free time.
Ok, it might be a little more work than that, but that is basically the gist. You don’t need to think about what you will make every day or wonder if you have the ingredients or need to stop to pick something up. By meal planning, you, my friend, have created more time for yourself during the week.
Save Money
If you are anything like me, you go to the grocery store, buy a ton of food, and when you get home you think, “Ok, but what can I make with all of this?” Then, you repeatedly to go back to the store to grab one or two ingredients you always seem to need. Maybe you stop to buy fast food. Maybe you order pizza because some days you are just way too tired to even think about making something.
With meal prep, you know exactly what you are eating and what ingredients you need with no extra stops to the grocery store or convenient fast food purchases. You will also throw away less food. No more wasted veggies or uneaten leftovers. Meal planning can help you stay on budget and perhaps you can finally afford that family vacation you’ve always dreamed of!
Weight Loss
Don’t be surprised if you start losing weight while starting a meal prep routine. By choosing fresh ingredients and healthier recipes, you are giving your body the nutrients it needs instead of quick foods loaded with empty carbs, loads of sugar and unhealthy fats. It will also help prevent you from overeating with portion control. Daily meal prep can help you learn proper portions which will help prevent you from overeating.
Find more helpful tips on how to lose weight through meal prep with the book Meal Prep Your Way to Weight Loss: 28 Days to a Fitter, Healthier You. With all that extra time and money, you might even be able to get a gym membership or just be more active in general.
Help the Environment
Meal prepping means you use less pre-packaged foods and likely less disposable plastic storage products too. By investing in a good set of re-usable storage containers instead of one-time-use or throw away products, you reduce your waste production and lessen the impact on our environment.
The Sistema® containers are perfect for back to school meal prepping. Their To Go™ line of containers are perfect for anything needed to pack sandwiches, snacks, salads and everything else in between. The fun colors and wide variety of shapes, sizes and innovative designs make these a versatile choice for back to school and any time of year, really!
You can customize meals and choice of containers based on your children’s age and needs, as well as your own or spouse’s lunch too. Get picky eaters or clean eating resistant kids on board by getting them involved by helping with their own meal prep for back to school. Let them choose their favorite fruits, veggies, snacks and meal ingredients and help put together each container!
You can purchase Sistema® containers on Amazon.com and they are running a back to school promotion right now and you can score many of the sizes I’ve used here like the sandwich or small splits on special now through August 18, 2018.
What are some of your meal prepping tips?
This post is sponsored by Everywhere Agency on behalf of Sistema®; however, all thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.